Notes and Queries, Number 47, September 21, 1850 eBook

and his supposed emendation
has ever since been taken as the
text; even Capell adopted
it. I am happy in having Mr. Amyot’s
concurrence in this restoration.”

Mr. Knight adopts Theobald’s reading, and Mr.
Dyce approves it in the following words:—­

“When Theobald made the emendation,
‘Most busy-less,’ he observed
that ’the corruption was so very little removed
from the truth of the text, that he could not
afford to think well of his own sagacity for having
discovered it.’ The correction is, indeed,
so obvious that we may well wonder that it had escaped
his predecessors; but we must wonder ten times
more that one of his successors, in a blind reverence
for the old copy, should re-vitiate the text,
and defend a corruption which outrages language,
taste, and common sense.”

Although at an earlier period of life I too adopted
Theobald’s supposed emendation, it never satisfied
me. I have my doubts whether the word busyless
existed in the poet’s time; and if it did, whether
he could possibly have used it here. Now it is
clear that labours is a misprint for labour;
else, to what does “when I do it”
refer? Busy lest is only a typographical error
for busyest: the double superlative was
commonly used, being considered as more emphatic, by
the poet and his contemporaries.

Thus in Hamlet’s letter, Act ii. Sc. 2.:

“I love thee best, O most best.”

and in King Lear, Act ii. Sc. 3.:

“To take the basest and most
poorest shape.”

The passage will then stand thus:—­

“But these sweet thoughts, do even
refresh my labour,
Most busiest when I do it.”

The sense will be perhaps more evident by a mere transposition,
preserving every word:

“But these sweet thoughts, most
busiest when I do
My labour, do even refresh it.”

Here we have a clear sense, devoid of all ambiguity,
and confirmed by what precedes; that his labours are
made pleasures, being beguiled by these sweet thoughts
of his mistress, which are busiest when he labours,
because it excites in his mind the memory of her “weeping
to see him work.” The correction has also
the recommendation of being effected in so simple
a manner as by merely taking away two superfluous letters.
I trust I need say no more; secure of the approbation
of those who (to use the words of an esteemed friend
on another occasion) feel “that making an opaque
spot in a great work transparent is not a labour to
be scorned, and that there is a pleasant sympathy
between the critic and bard—­dead though
he be—­on such occasions, which is an ample
reward.”